When Hungarian radical right-wingers rallied against a Jewish conference in Budapest in early May, a well-known Protestant pastor hid behind the stage while his wife stepped up to the podium to denounce Jews and Israel.

Lorant Hegedus could have preached the same anti-Semitism as his wife, a deputy for the populist Jobbik party in parliament. But his part in launching the rally may cost him his role as the far-right's favorite clergyman.

With anti-Semitism on the rise here, Christian churches are working with the Jewish community to counter the provocations against Jews and the Roma minority that have won Jobbik support among voters fed up with the country's economic crisis.

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Since the ouster of Mr. Mubarak in February 2011, a growing number of Copts, including some of the most successful businessmen, have left Egypt or are preparing to do so, fearing persecution by an Islamist-controlled government as much as the stagnant economy that is smothering their industries.

Among the most prominent are the heads of the Sawiris family, who for several months have been running their enormous business empire from abroad.

“Every week I learn of 10 people who are leaving or who have already left,” Mr. [Wasfi Amin] Wassef said. “They know that what happened to the Sawiris’ can happen to them tomorrow.”

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In majority Muslim Pakistan, religious minorities say democracy is killing them.

Intolerance has been on the rise for the past five years under Pakistan’s democratically elected government because of the growing violence of Islamic radicals, who are then courted by political parties, say many in the country’s communities of Shiite Muslims, Christians, Hindus and other minorities....

More than a dozen representatives of Pakistan’s minorities interviewed by The Associated Press expressed fears the vote will only hand more influence to extremists. Since the 2008 elections, under the outgoing government led by the left-leaning Pakistan People’s Party, sectarian attacks have been relentless and minorities have found themselves increasingly targeted by radical Islamic militants. Minorities have little faith the new election will change that.

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The war in Ambon and the wider Maluku islands started for a variety of reasons. But it quickly boiled down to a question of identity, of Christians versus Muslims, as more than 5,000 people were killed and 500,000 were displaced from their homes between 1999 and 2002.

The religious passions and communal hatred stirred up in the war put a question mark over Indonesia's moves to build a democracy after 40 years of dictatorship. Could Indonesia's Muslim majority coexist with Christians and other religious minorities without an authoritarian hand on the tiller?

Sitting in Ambon's Joas Coffee House 13 years after the fighting ended, the answer is clear: Yes. And sitting across from me is Jacky Manuputty, one member of a brave group of local community leaders, Muslim and Christian alike, who have helped heal the wounds of war and today act as the first responders of harmony when the fragile peace looks threatened.

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Cemeteries and even some mosques have refused to take his body. His city, Cambridge, has urged family members to bury him elsewhere. Republican U.S. Senate candidate Gabriel Gomez and local talk radio host Dan Rae want him dumped in the ocean, like Osama bin Laden. Clergy have largely kept mum.

“The only signs of people who are showing some sort of moral conscience are those few who stand with a card near the funeral home saying (burial) is a corporal work of mercy,” said James Keenan, a moral theologian at Boston College. “To say, ‘we won’t bury him’ makes us barbaric. It takes away mercy, the trademark of Christians. … I’m talking about this because somebody should.”

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A US government-appointed panel urged Washington Tuesday to step up pressure on Pakistan over religious freedom, warning that risks to its minorities have reached a crisis level.

In an annual report, the US Commission on International Religious Freedom also raised concerns about what it called a worsening situation in China, as well as problems in Egypt, Iran, Myanmar, Saudi Arabia and other nations.

The commission, which advises the government but does not make decisions, called for the United States to designate Pakistan, among eight other countries, as a “country of particular concern,” meaning it could be subject to sanctions if it fails to improve.

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After four years of increasing tensions between some Christian missionaries and local Muslims, the annual Arab International Festival in Dearborn is being moved from a street that has open access to a public park that could restrict admission to paid attendees.

Dearborn Mayor Jack O’Reilly said Friday that the city plans to shift the festival — the biggest annual outdoor gathering of Arab Americans in the U.S. — from Warren Avenue to Ford Woods Park, near the corner of Ford and Greenfield roads. One of the reasons for the move is liability concerns; the city has been hit with lawsuits from some Christian missionaries alleging their free speech rights were curtailed at the festival.

“Considering everything we’ve been through and what happened in the past,” said O’Reilly, the city wanted a place “where you can have a controlled site.”

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A Mormon couple, an Episcopalian, a Baha’i, other Protestants, a religious seeker and others gathered on a snowy Saturday morning adjacent to St. Mark’s Episcopal Cathedral in downtown Salt Lake City to learn how to transcend their differences.

The dozen participants at the four-hour Human Rights workshop, part of a monthlong celebration sponsored by the Salt Lake Interfaith Roundtable, explored questions of faith and hope, perceptions of themselves and others, and their thoughts about how to find common ground with those from different, even opposing, traditions.

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Church burnings, attacks on worshippers and suicide bombings in Nigeria are a recent phenomenon that threatens the longstanding harmony between Muslims and Christians, warned Nigeria’s new cardinal.

“(This) is all new to us,” Cardinal John Olorunfemi Onaiyekan, archbishop of Abuja, told MPs and Senators of the Canada Holy See Friendship Group Feb. 4.

“We didn’t think it would ever happen.”

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Sitting in the living room of his home in Erbil, capital of the Iraqi Kurdistan region, 63-year-old Rostom Sefarian stops talking, struggling to hold back the tears. It was July 2006 and Sefarian, an Armenian Christian living in the northern Iraqi city of Mosul, had been kidnapped by a group of Islamic fundamentalists — the latest victim in a series of abductions and killings of Iraqi Christians that continues to this day.

Sefarian was released five days later, when his family agreed to pay a $72,000 (U.S.) ransom. It was the second time Sefarian had been kidnapped; his family paid $12,000 to free him after one day in captivity the previous January. His wife’s cousin, also a Christian, was not as lucky: three days after being kidnapped, he was found dead by his family.

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An Indiana interfaith clergy group is repeatedly urging the state legislature to avoid any battle over gay marriage.

The Interfaith Coalition on Nondiscrimination (ICON), which is based in Indianapolis, published a letter this week signed by more than 230 clergy and leaders of faith communities from throughout the state.

The letter asks the legislature to stop further action on the Marriage Discrimination Amendment, which was passed by the 2011 legislature and is eligible for consideration in the current biennium.

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The dialogue committee commended the Grand Imam for establishing “Beit el Aila” for the promotion of national unity in Egypt. The dialogue committee also expressed its appreciation for the UK Christian Muslim Forum initiated by the Archbishop of Canterbury in the UK.

The Anglican delegation presented a paper on the understanding of “Citizenship in Christianity”. Although the context of our meeting was Egypt, the conversation was enriched by hearing of positive experiences in Muslim Christian relationships in many other parts of the world, including Pakistan, Malaysia and the United Kingdom. The paper was accepted with great appreciation.

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One of the holiest sites in Christendom has also been one of the most contested. The Church of the Holy Sepulcher in Jerusalem lies on the site where Jesus Christ is said to have been crucified and buried.

Multiple Christian denominations share the church uneasily, and clerics sometimes come to blows over the most minor of disputes. The Roman Catholic, Greek Orthodox, Armenian Apostolic, Coptic Orthodox, Ethiopian Orthodox and the Syriac Orthodox all have a presence in the church.

But the most recent conflict at the 4th century church was over something entirely different: an unpaid water bill.

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...the limited American experience with same-sex marriage to date gives us few concrete answers. So it makes sense to consider the Canadian experience since the first Canadian court established same-sex marriage a decade ago. There are, of course, important cultural and institutional differences between the US and Canada and, as is the case in any polity, much depends upon the actions of local political and cultural actors. That is to say, it is not necessarily safe to assume that Canadian experiences will be replicated here. But they should be considered; the Canadian experience is the best available evidence of the short-term impact of same-sex marriage in a democratic society very much like America.

Anyone interested in assessing the impact of same-sex marriage on public life should investigate the outcomes in three spheres: first, human rights (including impacts on freedom of speech, parental rights in public education, and the autonomy of religious institutions); second, further developments in what sorts of relationships political society will be willing to recognize as a marriage (e.g., polygamy); and third, the social practice of marriage.

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During a recent book launch in Rome, a noted theologian said that China will be home to the majority of the world's Christians within the next two decades.

“Interfaith dialogue is something that China, which will have the world's largest Christian population in 20 years, lives with every day,” said Harvey Cox during the presentation at the city's Jesuit Gregorian University.

Cox presented the book “Catholic Engagement with World Religions: A Comprehensive Study, in dialogue with its two editors” on Nov. 30 with Cardinal Karl Josef Becker, a German theologian of the Vatican's the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith.

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Although its relations with other faiths are far better than they were before the Second Vatican Council, the Catholic Church has still not resolved all the complexities of that new relationship. The way forward is by theological exploration, dialogue and joint action. Theologians must not be discouraged from thinking outside the box, as happened in the Vatican’s disgraceful treatment of the late Fr Jacques Dupuis SJ; nor should political complications stand in the way of addressing awkward questions, such as whether the Church should recognise a specifically religious claim by the Jewish people to the land of Israel.

The Vatican II decree Nostra Aetate transformed Jewish-Christians relations, outlawing Christian anti-Semitism and anti-Judaism. But it glossed over the land issue, not least because Christian Arab leaders became concerned that Palestinian interests should also be recognised for the sake of balance. In its final form, Nostra Aetate also had important things to say about Catholic-Muslim relations, and indeed relations with other faiths, too. But there are still loose ends....

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As the assistant humanist chaplain at Harvard University, Chris Stedman coordinates its “Values in Action” program. In his recent book, “Faitheist: How an Atheist Found Common Ground with the Religious,” he tells how he went from a closeted gay evangelical Christian to an “out” atheist, and, eventually, a Humanist.

On the blog NonProphet Status, and now in the book, Stedman calls for atheists and the religious to come together around interfaith work. It is a position that has earned him both strident -- even violent -- condemnation and high praise. Stedman talked with RNS about how and why the religious and atheists should work together.

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Recovering the theological significance of Sunday is fundamental to rebalancing our lives. As Orthodox and Catholics, we share a theological view of Sunday and so our purpose in this statement is four-fold: to offer a caring response to what is not just a human, but also a theological question; to add a little more volume to the growing chorus of Christian voices trying to be heard in the din of our non-stop worklife; to offer brief reflections in hopes of drawing attention to the fuller expositions elsewhere; and to reinforce the ecumenical consensus by speaking as Orthodox and Catholics with one voice.

For Christians, Sunday, the Lord’s Day, is a special day consecrated to the service and worship of God. It is a unique Christian festival. It is “the day the Lord has made” (Ps. 117 (118):24). Its nature is holy and joyful. Sunday is the day on which we believe God acted decisively to liberate the world from the tyranny of sin, death, and corruption through the Holy Resurrection of Jesus.

The primacy of Sunday is affirmed by the liturgical practice of the early church. St. Justin the Martyr writing around 150 AD notes that “it is on Sunday that we assemble because Sunday is the first day, the day on which God transformed darkness and matter and created the world and the day that Jesus Christ rose from the dead (First Apology, 67).”

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More Christians are under threat than any other faith group, some two hundred million, according to a recent book published by journalist Rupert Shortt.

Shortt, the religious editor of the Times Literary Supplement and author of several books on religious topics, recently published his latest book, “Cristianophobia,” (Random House).

Well before the September 11 attacks, many Christian communities were faced with severe problems of intolerance, he noted in the book’s introduction, and in the last decade the problem has worsened dramatically.

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“Bishop Kenneth Cragg held a unique position in the world of inter faith dialogue. His powerfully original mind, both analytic and poetic, was able to weave together themes and images from many and diverse religious backgrounds into a fresh theological perspective that still managed to do full honour to classical orthodoxy.

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The idea of Abrahamic religion is usually tied up with the notion of Abraham as the first monotheist. To the best-selling author Bruce Feiler, Abraham was "the first person to understand that there is only one God," and this insight is "the shared endowment of the Abrahamic faiths."

But the familiar image of Abraham as the discoverer of the true God and the uncompromising opponent of idolatry isn't found in Genesis or anywhere else in the Hebrew Bible. It is an idea that originated in Judaism after most of the Hebrew Bible had been composed, and from there it spread into the literature of the Talmudic rabbis and later into the Quran, forming an important commonality between Judaism and Islam.

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For as long as she can remember, Rev. C. Denise Yarbrough knew she was called to work for the holy ministries.

Born in New Jersey, she grew up in the Episcopal tradition and majored in religious studies at Barnard College. At the time, women were just starting to work as ordained ministers, but Yarbrough was discouraged by her religious mentors from entering the profession. “The priest told me to go out into the world and do something else, and then return one day,” she recalls. “I think he thought I never would, but I did!”

Twelve years after graduating Barnard and working as a lawyer, Yarbrough was ready to return to her called profession. Today, she serves as an Episcopal priest for the Episcopal Diocese of Rochester and is the recently appointed Director of Religious and Spiritual Life at the University of Rochester.

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[Lamin] Sanneh acknowledges a debt to the missionary schools that unintentionally introduced him to a desiccated version of Christian faith, and he tells how as an earnest young man he wandered from pastor to pastor, desperately seeking baptism, only to be deflected by missionaries who had compromised mission in their uneasy accommodation to Islamic culture. The story would almost be humorous if it were not so sad. Yet even the account of the missionaries’ rebuff is less painful to read than the account of what he received at the hands of liberal, mainline North American pastors who had long before enmeshed themselves in their culture by reducing their ministry to caregiving rather than conversion. As for many frustrated would-be converts in our age, it was easier for Sanneh to find Christ than for him to find Christian community. Eventually he became a Catholic while at Yale.

--Will Willimon in a review of Lamin Sanneh's new Summoned From the Margin (Eerdmans, 2012), Christian Century, the October 17th, 2012 issue, page 53 (emphasis mine)

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With Vatican II, the Catholic Church sent out the message that it was part of the modern world, said Thomas Ryan, director of the Loyola Institute for Ministry. “Not against, not above, not apart, but in the modern world,” he said. “The church sought to engage, not condemn.”

The council documents say there must be a conversation between the church and the world, Aymond said. “The church, by its teaching and by its discipleship, has something to say to the world. At the same time, the world is saying something to the church. It’s saying some good things, I think, about globalization and the environment, respecting people of all genders and classes and cultures and languages.

“We can’t just say we’re not going to be involved in these conversations. As the church, we have to be in conversation with others who agree and disagree with us.”

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Westerners may debate how moderate Egypt's Islamists are, but for Copts the questioning is futile. Their options are limited. While Copts are the largest Christian community in the Middle East, they're too small to play a role in deciding the fate of the country. They are not geographically concentrated in one area that could become a safe zone. The only option is to leave, putting an end to 2,000 years of Christianity in Egypt.

The sad truth is that not all will be able to flee. Those with money, English skills and the like will get out. Their poorer brethren will be left behind.

What can be done to save them? Egypt receives $1.5 billion in U.S. aid each year, and Washington has various means to make Egypt's new leaders listen. Islamist attempts to enshrine second-class status for Copts in Egypt's new constitution should be stopped. Outsiders should also keep an eye on Muslim Brotherhood politicians who are planning to take control of Coptic Church finances. At a minimum, donors should demand that attacks on Copts be met with punishment as well as condemnation.

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What has been less appreciated about Vatican II, though it is as significant as the halting steps on governance, is that it took account of the world outside the church. The church validated for the first time the principle of religious freedom and rejected all forms of civil discrimination based on religious grounds. Thus ended an era of cozy church-state relations that began in the fourth century with Emperor Constantine.

Before the council, Catholics were not only forbidden to pray with those of other faiths but also indoctrinated into a disdain or even contempt for them. (This was, of course, a two-way street.) Now, for the first time, Catholics were encouraged to foster friendly relations with Orthodox and Protestant Christians, as well as Jews and Muslims, and even to pray with them. The council condemned all forms of anti-Semitism and insisted on respect for Judaism and Islam as Abrahamic faiths, like Christianity.

These epochal decisions have been carried out imperfectly, not surprising for an institution as large, lumbering and complex as the Catholic Church....

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Several recent incidents in Berlin have escalated tensions between Muslims, Jews, and the city's secular majority. Over a month ago, a rabbi wearing a kippa, or yarmulke, was beaten by four "Arab-looking" youths after being asked if he and his daughter were Jewish. Public outcry led to a large demonstration in support of Berlin's Jews, including a flash mob of Jews and non-Jews wearing kippot. Tensions escalated days later when a second incident, in which Jewish school girls were harassed by a group of youths that included a girl wearing a head scarf, led to an exchange of harsh words between Jewish and Muslim leaders, though in neither case were the attackers caught or identified definitively. After being advised to urge greater religious tolerance, Muslim leaders denied responsibility for the attacks and pointed out their own experiences of intolerance in the city.

Then on Yom Kippur, two more anti-Semitic incidents took place—the first when a young white man threatened a local Jewish leader and told him to go back where he came from, and the second when a mother and her daughter were forced out of a taxi after telling the "German" driver they were going to synagogue. Diedre Berger of the Berlin office of the American Jewish Committee has now intervened, asking the German government to develop an action plan to combat anti-Semitism.

Meanwhile, a contrasting alliance between Jews and Muslims has formed in the aftermath of a regional court ruling against circumcision.

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Orient and Occident online magazine seeks to promote not just coexistence but cooperation with Muslims.
It was Egyptian media that brought the appalling "Innocence of Muslims" trailer to the wider attention of Muslims around the world. The consequences have been tragic to watch.
The country has also seen all-too-regular violent clashes between local Muslim and Christian communities, that have got no better since Egypt's revolution.
In this difficult atmosphere, the Diocese of Egypt, under the leadership of Bishop Mouneer Hanna Anis, has relaunched a magazine online that was first started by two pioneering CMS missionaries more than 100 years ago.

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It is harder than ever to claim, as the Prime Minister does, that Britain is still a Christian country. It was at the time when Baroness Thatcher stood outside No 10 and recited the prayer of St Francis of Assisi, to offer reassurance about her intentions. Two thirds of Brits were Christian then, and phrases such as “where there is discord, may we bring harmony” had wide resonance. Those were the days where friends parted using phrases like “God bless” and hedged future plans with “God willing”. But over the past three decades Britain has been losing its religion at a precipitous rate – as Ed Miliband has worked out.

There was almost no comment, let alone fuss, about the section of the Labour leader’s speech where he proclaimed that he had no religion. This, in itself, is something of a milestone. When Neil Kinnock spoke about his atheism, he was monstered, as if this were evidence of his otherness. In fact, he was at the vanguard of a growing secularist trend. Today religion has become, if anything, a handicap to those governing modern Britain. Tony Blair judged it best to keep quiet about his faith. David Cameron has declared a Christianity-lite, one that comes and goes like “Magic FM in the Chilterns”.

But this week, Ed Miliband wanted to tell the world about his creed. He is not a man for synagogues or churches, he said, but is emphatically a man of faith. “Not a religious faith,” he said, “but a faith none the less. A faith, I believe, many religious people would recognise....”

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After spending 18 of the last 30 years in Egypt, I am not a romantic when it comes to the realities of religious intolerance, social discrimination and sectarian violence experienced by many Christians due to religious fanatics who claim to be Christian, Jewish or Muslim. I have overheard various “men of religion” refer to Christians using the religious “M” word, “mushrik” meaning polytheist and idolater or “K” word “kafr” meaning infidel. I’ve heard it all and seen a lot. While two wrongs never make a right, Christians of most denominations should never fail to recall the violence, discrimination and persecution we have been guilty of during our own 2,000 year history “in the name of God and Jesus Christ”.

I cannot speak for Muslims outside of Egypt, but I can try to explain the reactions of many to such a film without equating these reasons to being justifications. Most Americans get quite upset when we watch the American flag being burned or trampled on. We at least get upset if someone desecrates the Bible and Catholics get very upset if someone desecrates the Eucharist. Maybe we don’t burn those who do or torture them anymore, but we have in the past. We claim to be “one nation under God with liberty and justice for all” and yet we have always found at least one race, nationality, religion or orientation to focus on and “go after”.

Western societies that profess “freedom of religion” have moved toward “freedom FROM religion”. Personally, even as a Catholic priest, I feel that “religion” in civil democracies have the obligation to form and educate the individual and collective conscience of its followers and to be “a voice of conscience” in society. However, I oppose any religion dictating to government how it should legislate morality according to any particular religious belief system. At the same time, this is NOT the current reality in the Muslim world whether I/we like it or not. Cultural sensitivity must include religious and social sensitivity.

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....[Bishop Suheil Dawani] said the task was harder than ever, with a Christian population that has shrunk from about 30 percent of the population of the overall total just after World War II to about 1 percent today.

The Episcopal Diocese of Jerusalem oversees the Anglican community in Israel, Palestine, Jordan, Lebanon and Syria, but only has 29 parishes and about 7,000 members. Its reach, though, is deeper and wider than what shows up in the pews, with direct support of two hospitals, five health clinics, five rehabilitation centers and 17 schools.

"Our main influence is through the work of our institutions," Dawani said.

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The appeal for legislation to ban the publication of material that causes religious offence was con­tained in a letter sent last weekend to the UN secretary-general, Ban Ki-moon, by the President-Bishop of the Episcopal Church in Jerusa­lem and the Middle East, the Most Revd Mouneer Anis. The other sig­natories were: the Bishop in Cyprus & the Gulf, the Rt Revd Michael Lewis; the Area Bishop for North Africa, Dr Bill Musk; and the Area Bishop for the Horn of Africa, Dr Grant Le­-Marquand.

The Bishops proposed that an "international declaration be nego­tiated that outlaws the intentional and deliberate insulting or defama­tion of persons (such as prophets), symbols, texts, and constructs of belief deemed holy by people of faith".

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Youth ministry researcher Chap Clark says, “I’m convinced that the single most important area where we’ve lost ground with kids is in our commitment and ability to ground them in God’s Word.”

As a result, Barry Shafer says, “The church today, including both the adult and teenage generations, is in an era of rampant biblical illiteracy.” Duffy Robbins takes this one step further when he says: “Our young people have become incapable of theological thinking because they don’t have any theology to think about. … And, as Paul warns us, this … leaves us as ‘infants, tossed back and forth by the waves, and blown here and there by every wind of teaching’ (Ephesians 4:14).”

At the conclusion of the National Study of Youth and Religion, lead researcher Christian Smith reported: “Even though most teens are very positive about religion and say it’s a good thing, the vast majority are incredibly inarticulate about religion. … It doesn’t seem to us that many teens are being very well-educated in their faith traditions.”

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With Muslim leaders in many countries calling for a global law barring what they call insults to Islam, the main non-Catholic world Christian grouping on Monday said just such a law in Pakistan is used to persecute other religions.

Pakistan's "Blasphemy Law" has driven the country's religious minorities - Christians, Hindus and Ahmadis, a dissenting Islamic group - into "a state of fear and terror", said the World Council of Churches (WCC), organisers of a 3-day conference on the law.

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Time magazine named author and pastor Brian McLaren one of the 25 most influential evangelicals in America.

McLaren has written more than 20 books, and he is a principal figure in the Emerging Church, a Christian movement that rejects the organized and institutional church in favor of a more modern, accepting community.

McLaren's new book is called Why Did Jesus, Moses, the Buddha and Mohammed Cross the Road?: Christian Identity in a Multi-Faith World.

McLaren chose the title deliberately, evoking the beginning of a familiar joke in the hope that Christians would be more understanding of the religions that surround them. "One thing I think is quite certain," McLaren tells weekends on All Things Considered host Guy Raz, "If Jesus, Moses, the Buddha and Mohammed were to bump into each other along the road and go have a cup of tea or whatever, I think we all know they would treat one another far different and far better than a lot of their followers would."

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"Religious fundamentalism seeks to take power for political ends, at times using violence, over the individual conscience and over religion," the Pope said.

"All religious leaders in the Middle East [should] endeavour, by their example and their teaching, to do everything possible to uproot this threat, which indiscriminately and fatally affects believers."

The pontiff's exhortations were made public as he signed recommendations on how to improve the lives of the Christian minority, making up 40% of Lebanon's population, and its relations with Islam and Judaism.

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Pope Benedict XVI will arrive in Lebanon on Friday for a three-day visit that he labeled a "peace pilgrimage" at a time when the region and its people are facing anguish, from war in Syria to violence in Libya.

Ahead of the trip, a senior Vatican official said Thursday he didn't expect the pope to make specific remarks about the violence against U.S. embassies in the area, or the online video that many protesters said had sparked it, during his visit so as not to risk angering the Muslim street and inflaming the crisis.

The trip "was already a minefield. Now a few more mines have been tossed in," the official said.

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the director of the Vatican press office, Jesuit Father Federico Lombardi, ...[Wednesday] released a message asserting that "profound respect for the beliefs, texts, outstanding figures and symbols of the various religions" is essential if people hope to coexist peacefully.

"The serious consequences of unjustified offense and provocations against the sensibilities of Muslim believers are once again evident in these days, as we see the reactions they arouse, sometimes with tragic results, which in their turn nourish tension and hatred, unleashing unacceptable violence," the statement added.

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From here:

The National Association of Evangelicals (NAE) grieves the tragic and senseless deaths of innocent representatives of the U.S. government at the embassy in Libya. Tuesday's violence in Libya, and other areas, is reported to be sparked by an offensive film about Islam. The film's origins have not been verified.

"Very few Americans knew anything about this film until the violence started," said Leith Anderson, NAE President. "This insulting video does not represent the vast majority of Americans who desire to live at peace with people of other faiths."

The attack has been condemned by both the U.S. and Libya governments. The NAE joins together in humble prayer for the victims' families and for peace and justice in the region. The NAE calls its members to continue in efforts that build stronger relationships of understanding between those of different faiths.

Anderson said, "How should the people of the world respond to this video? Don't watch it."

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Most Americans knew nothing about "Innocence of Muslims." That's the film that has set the Muslim world on fire, causing protests in Egypt and Libya that led to the death of the U.S. envoy to Libya, Christopher Stevens.

The bottom line is that we know very little about "Sam Bacile," the man who says he produced the film and who says Sam Bacile is his name. The Wall Street Journal caught up with Bacile before he went into hiding. (Update at 3:34 p.m. ET. Some of the claims made in this interview have come under question. We've updated this post — read below — to reflect that.....)

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Religious rights activists are hailing the release over the weekend of an Iranian pastor accused of apostasy and a Pakistani girl who was charged with blasphemy.

Pastor Youcef Nadarkhani was released Saturday (Sept. 8) after a six-hour hearing, reported the American Center for Law and Justice, which worked to garner American support for the minister’s release. The Christian convert had faced possible execution.

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A West Java church which has become emblematic of record-breaking religious intolerance in Indonesia will now be relocated by the Indonesian government.

Taman Yasmin Indonesian Christian Church (GKI Yasmin) legally acquired permission to build a church in Bogor in 2006 but has been shuttered for years due to opposition from neighboring Muslim extremists. The Constitutional Court, the archipelago's equivalent of the U.S. Supreme Court, ruled in 2011 that the church be allowed to occupy its building. The mayor of Bogor refused to comply.

The government's recent decision came after a closed-door meeting between the Indonesian Minister of Internal Affairs and Bogor city leaders excluded GKI Yasmin church representatives but did include representatives from a local Muslim extremist group. According to ministry spokesman Reydonnyzar Moenek, the government is preparing replacement land for the church.

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It began when a Christian dry-cleaning business scorched a Muslim man's shirt.

First came the insults, and then Muslims and Christians were clashing in a square in this farming town rimmed by pyramids. A gasoline bomb whistled off a roof and struck Moaz Hasaballah, leaving him blistered and, days later, dead.

Now radios squawk and patrolmen camp like an army near the doors of a locked church. But deaths like that don't come in ones — not here, anyway — and there was talk that another killing wasn't far off.

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The Church in Egypt is being subjected to “cheap political blackmail and political thuggery” as Islamists demand that its funds come under state control in what could be seen as a ploy to deflect growing scrutiny of Muslim Brotherhood finances and affairs.

This was the assessment of Christian rights’ group Copts Without Chains to the call last week by Islamists in the Constituent Assembly that the government monitor church finances. Khaled Saeed, spokesman for the Salafist Front, said in a debate on Egyptian TV on 28 August that the measure was “necessary” to know where the Church’s money goes and “if it is on the right track or not”.

Absurdly over-stating the power of the Christian community in Egypt, Saeed claimed that the smallest monastery in Egypt was larger than the Vatican, and he alleged there were concerns of a “church state within the Egyptian civil state”.

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Nonetheless, the question remains: Why haven't these blatant acts of prejudice become a cause célèbre? I can think of at least three reasons.

First, some Christians may be hesitant to speak out because, in this instance, the prejudice is coming from Jews. Given the long and depressing history of anti-Judaism in Christianity, some Christians may, in their gut, be tempted to feel: "Yeah, this is disgusting, but in a way we've got it coming."

Second, most Christians in the Holy Land are passionately pro-Palestinian, for the obvious reason that many are Palestinians themselves. Some Christians in the West sympathetic to Israel are therefore reluctant to take up their causes, however deserving in themselves, for fear of weakening the Israeli position.

Third, the travails of a handful of Trappist monks in Israel -- or Dalit and tribal Christians in India, or Nigerian Christians menaced by the Boko Haram, or the 150,000 new Christian martyrs every year generally -- simply have a hard time breaking through the media filter in the West, perhaps especially in the United States, where it's now all 2012 elections all the time.

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In the coming days, the calendar will bring the anniversaries of two signal events. One, of course, is Sept. 11, a Tuesday this year, as it was in 2001, when Al Qaeda terrorists in four hijacked planes killed more than 3,000 Americans. With public memorial services and private tears, those deaths will be recalled and mourned.

The other anniversary is of the visit President George W. Bush made to a Washington mosque just six days after the attack, where he spoke eloquently against the harassment of Arabs and Muslims living in the United States and about the need to respect Islam.

This act of leadership and statesmanship, however, has all but vanished from the national collective memory. It deserves, instead, to be noted and heeded and esteemed.

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Berlin's senate said doctors could legally circumcise infant boys for religious reasons in its region, given certain conditions, ending months of legal uncertainty after a court banned the practice this year.

The ruling in June by a district court in Cologne outraged Muslims and Jews and sparked an emotional debate in the country.

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Christians should leave their religious beliefs at home or accept that a personal expression of faith at work, such as wearing a cross, means they might have to resign and get another job, government lawyers have said.

Landmark cases, brought by four British Christians, including two workers forced out of their jobs after visibly wearing crosses, have been heard today at the European Court of Human Rights
David Cameron, the Prime Minister, has previously pledged to change the law to protect religious expression at work but official legal submissions on Tuesday to Strasbourg human rights judges made a clear “difference between the professional and private sphere”.

James Eadie QC, acting for the government, told the European court that the refusal to allow an NHS nurse and a British Airways worker to visibly wear a crucifix at work “did not prevent either of them practicing religion in private”, which would be protected by human rights law.

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The Christian girl who was allegedly framed for blasphemy by her local mullah has been hailed as a "daughter of the nation" by one of Pakistan's most senior Islamic clerics, who also vowed to guarantee her safety if she is eventually released from prison.

The heavyweight support for Rimsha Masih from the chairman of the All Pakistan Ulema Council, a grouping of Islamic clerics, is being seen as a remarkable turn of events in a country where individuals accused of insulting Islam are almost never helped by powerful public figures.

In a fiery press conference at a central Islamabad hotel, Hafiz Mohammad Tahir Mehmood Ashrafi, flanked by other senior clerics, demanded all the organs of the Pakistani state come together to investigate the circumstances surrounding the arrest last month of a girl who it is claimed has Down's syndrome.

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A leading Catholic human rights activist in Pakistan is calling for charges to be dropped in the case of a young, special needs girl accused of blasphemy.
Peter Jacob, executive secretary of the National Commission for Justice and Peace for the Church in Pakistan, told Aid to the Church in Need that he strongly doubts the allegations leveled against Rimsha Masih.
She is accused of burning 10 pages of the Noorani Qaida, an Islamic booklet used to learn basic Arabic and the Koran.

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Kenyan police have fired tear gas to disperse Muslim protesters who have looted shops and burned barricades for a second day in the coastal city of Mombasa.

The protests follow the drive-by shooting of radical Muslim preacher Aboud Rogo Mohammed on Monday.

The cleric had been accused by the UN and US of recruiting and funding Islamist fighters in Somalia.

One person was killed and churches attacked in riots on Monday.

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In one of the strongest stances yet taken against corruption, people of all faiths came together in Khayelitsha on Wednesday to launch an anti-corruption campaign led by the Western Cape Religious Leaders Forum.

The forum is supported by Kairos Southern Africa and the SA Council of Churches.

Religious leaders in the city, headed by Anglican Archbishop Thabo Makgoba, issued a stern warning to political leaders about their reluctance to deal with corruption.

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Controversy continues to swirl around Pakistan's blasphemy law after the arrest of a young Christian girl for defiling words from the Quran.

Pakistani President Asif Ali Zardari has asked the country's Interior Ministry for a report about the Aug. 16 arrest of Rimshah Masih, described as an 11-year-old with Down syndrome in various media reports.

Even so, Nina Shea, director of the Hudson Institute's Center for Religious Freedom and a former member of the U.S. Commission on International Religious Freedom, suggested an ominous fate for the girl, in a National Review Online blog Aug. 21.

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An 11-year-old Christian Pakistani girl could face the death penalty under the country's notorious blasphemy laws, after she was accused by her neighbours of deliberately burning sacred Islamic texts.

Rifta Masih was arrested on Thursday, after complaints against her prompted angry demonstrations. Asif Ali Zardari, the president, has ordered the interior ministry to investigate the case.

As communal tensions continued to rise, about 900 Christians living on the outskirts of Islamabad have been ordered to leave a neighbourhood where they have lived for almost two decades.

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Two more churches in Indonesia's West Java province have been forcibly closed amid opposition and disputes over paperwork.

A large tent used for services by St Johannes Baptista Church in Bogor was sealed off by the authorities on 7 August. The congregation has been using the tent since 2006 as a temporary measure while the church awaits a permit for a proper building, which it applied for in 2000.

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As Pakistan's media has expanded in recent years, there's been a rise in Islamic preachers with popular TV call-in talk shows. And they've had their share of scandal. One famous TV host fled the country after embezzlement allegations. Others are accused of spewing hate speech.

That's the case for Pakistan's most popular televangelist, Aamir Liaquat, who's just been rehired by the country's top TV channel despite accusations that he provoked deadly attacks in 2008.

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Since the presumptive Republican nominee for president is a Mormon, St. Jude the Apostle Episcopal Church in Cupertino sees that as a hot topic among both liberal and conservative voters this election year.

In an effort to educate the community on the subject, The Rev. Maly Carswell Hughes is hosting a forum on Aug. 26 to discuss Christianity and Mormonism as part of its adult education series. Church organizers already see an intense interest in Mitt Romney's religion. The interest is drawing comparison to John F. Kennedy, a Roman Catholic, and his election in 1960.

Hughes is looking to talk with church members and guests about Mormonism and discuss the religion's similarities to, and differences from, Christianity. The forum will not be a critique of either religion nor will it be political, but instead focus on the many similarities and differences between the two faiths.

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As I look back over the last ten years, it is clear that our relationship as Christians and Muslims has grown and deepened. It has not been an easy time, and there are huge challenges that we still face together. Nevertheless, we have learned how to quarry together the resources we have of a vision of human beings honoured before God. The word honour, I believe, is one we should learn to use more freely, and even extravagantly, when we talk about our human world. We honour human beings because God in his creation and in his dealings with human beings honours them.

In practical terms this honouring has meant that Muslims and Christians have been working as never before in international development to serve the world’s poorest people, and I want to recognise the huge amount of financial giving that the Muslim community pours out during Ramadan especially. It has also meant at a local level that Muslims have shared with Christians and others during Ramadan in service to their communities through the ‘A Year of Service’ initiative, in the ‘Near Neighbours’ programme and in many other ways.

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Near the Syrian city of Aleppo, the Church of St. Simeon the Stylite commemorates the 5th-century ascetic who became an ancient sensation by living atop a tall pedestal for decades to demonstrate his faith. Krak des Chevaliers, an awe-inspiring castle near Homs, was a fortress for the order of the Knights Hospitaller in their quest to defend a crusader kingdom. Seydnaya, a towering monastery in a town of the same name, was probably built in the time of Justinian.

A nun there spoke about Syria's current crisis from within a candlelit alcove this week, surrounded by thousand-year-old votive icons donated by Russian Orthodox churchgoers and silver pendants in the shape of body parts that supplicants have sought to heal—feet, heads, legs, arms, even a pair of lungs and a kidney.

"It's not a small thing we are facing," she said, speaking as much about the country as her faith. "We just want the killing to stop."

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KIM LAWTON (Managing Editor and Guest Anchor): There has been an outpouring of interfaith sympathy and support for the US Sikh community after last Sunday’s attack (August 5) at a temple near Milwaukee that took the lives of six worshipers. In what officials called an act of domestic terrorism, a gunman with neo-Nazi ties opened fire as local Sikhs—or “sicks” as some adherents call themselves—had gathered for a worship service. Religious groups across the spectrum condemned the attack. Many communities held prayer services and vigils to remember the victims and to pray for religious tolerance. Groundswell, the social action initiative of Auburn Seminary in New York, gathered thousands of messages of hope and healing for Milwaukee’s Sikh community. They called the project “We Are All Sikhs Today.” Groundswell’s director, Valarie Kaur, who is Sikh, delivered the messages in person. She joins me now from Milwaukee.

Valarie, thank you for being with us. Why did you feel it was important to bring these messages?

VALARIE KAUR (Groundswell, Auburn Seminary): Well, ...this is a tragedy not just for the Sikh community, but for all Americans, and I know that many Americans were hungry to express their love and support in some way.

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The narrative that has emerged in both media coverage and public discourse since... [the day of the violent shooting in Wisconsin] has been one of religious mistaken identity. It presumes that the killer, identified as a white supremacist named Wade M. Page, may have shot the Sikhs because he ignorantly believed they were Muslim.

Such a story line is accurate as far as it goes. Hundreds of times since the terrorist attacks on Sept. 11, 2001, Sikhs have been the victims of bias crimes. The perpetrators have invariably assumed that because Sikh men wear turbans and have beards they are Muslims, even specifically Taliban. How terrible it is that it has taken the slayings in Wisconsin to serve as a national teachable moment about the theology and practices of the Sikh religion.

Yet the mistaken-identity narrative carries with it an unspoken, even unexamined premise. It implies that somehow the public would have — even should have — reacted differently had Mr. Page turned his gun on Muslims attending a mosque. It suggests that such a crime would be more explicable, more easily rationalized, less worthy of moral outrage.

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The sixth meeting of the Anglican-Jewish Commission of the Chief Rabbinate of Israel and office of the Archbishop of Canterbury was hosted by the latter, at Mansfield College Oxford, on 31st July and 1st August 2012 / 12th and 13th ....

The Commission’s mandate is taken from the provisions of the joint declaration of the Archbishop and the Chief Rabbis made at Lambeth Palace on 6th September 2006 and confirmed at their subsequent meeting in Jerusalem.

The meeting opened with the reading of a message from the Archbishop of Canterbury expressing his appreciation of the important ongoing relationship that the Commission represents and his own warm relationship with the Chief Rabbis of Israel with whom he had met earlier in the year in Jerusalem.

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“Before the war there was no separation between Christian and Muslim,” I was told on a recent visit by Shamun Daawd, a liquor-store owner who fled Baghdad after he received Islamist death threats. I met him at the Syrian Orthodox Patriarchate in Damascus, where he had come to collect the rent money the Patriarchate provided for the refugees. “Under Saddam no one asked you your religion and we used to attend each other’s religious services,” he said. “Now at least 75 per cent of my Christian friends have fled.”

Those Iraqi refugees now face a second displacement while their Syrian hosts are themselves living in daily fear of having to flee for their lives. The first Syrian refugee camps are being erected in the Bekaa valley of Lebanon; others are queuing to find shelter in camps in Jordan, north of Amman. Most of the bloodiest killings and counter-killings that have been reported in Syria have so far been along Sunni-Alawite faultlines, but there have been some reports of thefts, rape and murder directed at the Christian minority, and in one place — Qusayr — wholesale ethnic cleansing of the Christians accused by local jihadis of acting as pro-regime spies. The community, which makes up around 10 per cent of the total population, is now frankly terrified.

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As Sikhism spread far and wide in the past century, it has been no stranger to discrimination and violence.

Authorities have yet to determine a motive for Sunday's shooting in the Milwaukee suburb of Oak Creek, in which an assailant entered a Sikh temple, known as a gurudwara, and gunned down six congregants and wounded three others before himself being killed by police. But many Sikh men keep their unshorn hair tightly wrapped by a turban, which gives them a distinct and recognizable appearance. As a result, increasingly since the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks, Sikhs have been mistakenly identified – and occasionally targeted – as Muslims.

The New York-based Sikh Coalition was formed in the wake of such incidents, including one that occurred just days after the 2001 terrorist attacks in which the Sikh owner of a gas station in Mesa, Ariz., was shot and killed, reportedly because the assailant thought he was Muslim.

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The religious aspect of the violence, the report says, is reinforced by radical Islamist groups like Boko Haram which, the task force believes, exploits the secular issues, and the revenge killings by Christians and Muslims.

The report states: ‘The joint delegation believes that the primary causes of the current tension and conflict in Nigeria are not inherently based in religion but rather, rooted in a complex matrix of political, social, ethnic, economic, and legal problems, among which the issue of justice—or the lack of it—looms large as a common factor. Nevertheless, the joint delegation acknowledges that there is a possibility that the current tension and conflict might become subsumed by its religious dimension (especially along geographical ‘religious fault–lines’) and so particularly warns against letting this idea—through misperception and simplification— become a self– fulfilling prediction.’

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Is there a way to overcome religious intolerance?

Given global demographic changes, it’s a vital question. “The most certain prediction that we can make about almost any modern society is that it will be more diverse a generation from now than it is today,” the political scientist Robert D. Putnam has written. “This is true from Sweden to the United States and from New Zealand to Ireland.”

In the United States, the question holds special significance for the simple reason that American society is highly religious and highly diverse and — on matters concerning faith — considerably more politically polarized than a quarter-century ago.

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Speeding up his vehicle, the attacker approached a checkpoint near the church in Bauchi State, which has previously been hit by Islamist group Boko Haram and where tension between Muslims and Christians has led to violence in the past.

"We have a checkpoint not far from the church which prevented the bomber from gaining access to his target," said state police commissioner Mohammed Ladan.

"So he rammed the car into a security gate and the car exploded, killing him and eight other people," he added.

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Christian lawyers and activists have criticized the Supreme Court for its failure to protect religious minority women from forced conversion and urged the government to adopt specific legal protections.

Peter Jacob, executive director of the Episcopal Commission for Justice and Peace, said during a consultative meeting with Christian lawyers on Saturday that minority women live under constant threat of abduction and conversion.

“The religious minorities are under threat and hesitant to allow their women to join any profession due to fear of losing a family member,” he said.

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The premise of [Eliza] Griswold’s book [The 10th Parallel] is that although there is frequent and bloody tension between Christians and Muslims along the 10th Parallel, especially where resources are scarce, there is no ‘clash of civilizations’. Rather, there is a competition for souls that is strongest among faiths, as Christians fight for Christians and Muslims fight for Muslims. “There is a proliferation of vibrant forms of religious practice. They look pretty kooky from a distance, but as any good Nigerian will tell you, religion is a market place. And it’s up to everybody to get as many people as possible to fill their Churches and Mosques.”

Enlightened religious organisations of both faiths in southern Nigeria are confronting reactionary groups in the north, groups which believe that vaccinations are poisons and that natural disasters are punishments from God. Meanwhile, Anglicanism and Catholicism are being supplanted along the 10th Parallel by flashy Pentecostals, who preach that God is the surest route to material wealth.

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The Christians of Upper Egypt are sure about two things: First, they really like democracy – the new-found sense that everyone is considered equal (Muslim and Christian, men and women), and second, the prospect of what Wednesday and Thursday's democratic choice for president may turn out to be scares the devil out of them!

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It is fashionable these days for Western leaders to praise Indonesia as a model Muslim democracy. Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton has declared, “If you want to know whether Islam, democracy, modernity and women’s rights can coexist, go to Indonesia.” And last month Britain’s prime minister, David Cameron, lauded Indonesia for showing that “religion and democracy need not be in conflict.”

Tell that to Asia Lumbantoruan, a Christian elder whose congregation outside Jakarta has recently had two of its partially built churches burned down by Islamist militants. He was stabbed by these extremists while defending a third site from attack in September 2010.

This week in Geneva, the United Nations is reviewing Indonesia’s human rights record. It should call on President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono to crack down on extremists and protect minorities. While Indonesia has made great strides in consolidating a stable, democratic government after five decades of authoritarian rule, the country is by no means a bastion of tolerance.

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Although Pope Paul VI had already taken decisive steps towards rapprochement with Judaism, the engagement in this issue by the leadership of the Catholic Universal Church was only really apprehended by the wider public in the form of Pope John Paul II. His passionate endeavours for Jewish–Christian dialogue surely have their roots initially in his personal biography. Karol Wojtyla grew up in the small Polish town of Wadowice which consisted to at least one quarter of Jewish. Since everyday contact and friendship with Jews was taken for granted already in his childhood it was for him as Pope an important concern to maintain his friendship with a Jewish school friend, and to intensify the bonds of friendship with Judaism in general.

Beyond that, John Paul was able to give visible expression to his concern for reconciliation with Judaism through grand public gestures. Already in the first year of his pontificate on 7 June 1979 he visited the former concentration camp of Auschwitz–Birkenau, where in front of the memorial stone with its Hebrew inscription he recalled the victims of the Shoah in a particular manner with the moving words: “This inscription awakens the memory of the People whose sons and daughters were intended for total extermination. This People draws its origin from Abraham, our Father in faith (cf. Rom 4:12) as was expressed by Paul of Tarsus. The very People that received from God the commandment “Thou shalt not kill” itself experienced in a special measure what is meant by killing. It is not permissible for anyone to pass by this inscription with indifference.”[15] Even more attention was paid by the public media to the visit by Pope John Paul II to the Roman synagogue on 13 April 1986, which is also accorded special significance because there was a Jewish community in Rome long before the Christian faith was brought to Rome. The historical significance of this event however is based above all on the fact that it was the first time in history the Bishop of Rome has visited a synagogue, to bear testimony to his respect for Judaism before the whole world. The gesture of the embrace of the Chief Rabbi Elio Toaff and Pope John Paul II remains an indelible memory.

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The Jewish celebration in Djerba went ahead without a hitch on May 9. Several hundred worshipers danced with Torah scrolls in a small procession outside El Ghriba synagogue. Men played the darbuka, sang songs, and prayed inside the ancient house of worship. The gathering was surrounded at all times by a small army of policemen to ensure nothing went wrong.

"To me, there is something magical about Jews and Arabs living together like they do here," said Guy Tzinmann, a French Jew who came from Paris to take part in the event. "If you don't come with an Israeli passport, they don't give you any trouble. And unlike Algeria, where my mother is from, I can come here to visit."

To be sure, turnout could have been stronger; only a few dozen people came from overseas, a far cry from the thousands who attended over the past decade. But it's hard to see the event as anything other than a success.

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Too often, ....[says Mouw in his new book], Evangelicals pick up little-taught LDS beliefs — such as humans becoming gods or having their own planets — and put them at the center of Mormon theology, rather than at the periphery.

"If in our attempts to defeat them we play fast and loose with the truth by attributing to them things they don’t in fact teach," Mouw writes, "then we have become false teachers: teachers of untruths."

Mouw spells out the doctrinal differences between The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints and historical Christian faiths: the nature of God and Jesus, the nature of the Trinity, nonbiblical Mormon scriptures and the rejection of the creeds. He rejects these positions.

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Faiza N. Ali paced across the plaza outside City Hall in Lower Manhattan, consulting a to-do list and juggling the messages on two BlackBerries. How was the turnout? Were the speakers prepped? One minister had already alerted Ms. Ali that he was running late. Another of her colleagues had gone to Borough Hall in Brooklyn by mistake.

On this blustery morning two weeks ago, Ms. Ali was undergoing one of the first tests of her new job as a community organizer, helping to run a rally in support of proposed legislation encouraging more local investment by banks. And by the time the hundred participants had assembled on the City Hall steps, Ms. Ali, a petite figure in a hijab, was standing beside a Catholic priest, holding the edge of a banner from Brooklyn Congregations United.

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Some readers might perhaps not be aware that Princess Badiya hails from the Jordanian Royal Hashemite Family and that she supports practical work to promote inter-faith and cross-cultural understanding. Moreover, her father - HRH Prince Hassan Bin Talal of Jordan - is one of the towering figures in interreligious dialogue and perhaps also one of the foremost thinkers across the world.

The talk was both encouraging and vivifying. Speaking ‘simply’ as a Muslim woman, and bringing into it her own vignettes and stories as well as her sense of discernment, humour and infectious laughter, Princess Badiya’s paper was - perhaps not unexpectedly - strongly supportive of Christian-Muslim dialogue as she enumerated a host of reasons why the followers of those two great monotheistic traditions should talk to each other rather than at each other. But she was also disarmingly candid about the negative stereotypes of Islam in the West: some of them fomented by the rapacious attitudes of extremist Muslims whose deeds or words colour negatively a global religion that is neither monolithic nor homogeneous.

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Recently, the human-rights activist, former Dutch politician, and Somali exile Ayaan Hirsi Ali wrote about a global war on Christians in Muslim countries. She discussed at length the appalling phenomenon of violent intolerance towards Christian communities, and cast blame on the international community and prominent NGOs for failing to address this problem....

As bad as anti-Christian violence and intimidation is, indifference to the plight of Christian groups under threat is widespread among governments, the media, and even ordinary citizens. A smattering of Christian NGOs works to publicize the issue, but mainstream human-rights organizations have largely neglected to highlight cases of explicit anti-Christian attacks and persecution.

There is an obvious reticence by international bodies even to acknowledge the problem. But according to the Pew Forum, at least 10 percent of the world’s Christians ― 200 million people in 133 countries ― live in societies as a minority group.

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In the service lay a story of black Christians and white Jews who once shared a kind of promised land, a peacefully integrated section of Indianapolis called Southside. Its decades of harmony were a rebuke to the Southern-style racial divisions that characterized Indiana for much of the 20th century, from the Ku Klux Klan’s heyday in the interwar years to George Wallace’s popularity with the state’s voters in the 1960s.

Upward mobility, Interstate 70 and the construction of a football stadium hollowed out the neighborhood starting in the late 1960s, scattering its residents and severing bonds of commerce and friendship. But in the last four years, an anthropology professor at Indiana University-Purdue University Indianapolis, Susan B. Hyatt, has set about finding former Southsiders and restoring those ties through social events and reciprocal worship services at South Calvary and the Etz Chaim Sephardic synagogue.

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Swiss theologian Hans Urs von Balthasar was instrumental in helping Ilyas Khan, a British philanthropist and former Muslim, to become Catholic. But so too were many other distinctly Catholic influences, all amounting to a “pull” towards the faith rather than a “push” away from Islam.

Khan, a merchant banker by training and the owner of the Accrington Stanley soccer team, is also chairman of the prominent British charity Leonard Cheshire Disability — the largest organization in the world helping people with disabilities. In a revealing interview with Register Rome correspondent Edward Pentin, Khan explains in more detail what drew him to the Catholic Church.

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On Easter Sunday, the great hall of Grace Episcopal Church was quiet. The choir wasn't singing, the Rector wasn't preaching and Sunday school wasn't ending because it hadn't begun in the 166-year-old building in almost a year.

Last August, an earthquake centered in Virginia shook the congregation out of their home at Grace Episcopal in downtown Charleston.

Instead of pews, there's scaffolding. Red 'danger, do not enter' tape covers the hall instead Easter decorations.

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Filed under: * Anglican - Episcopal • Episcopal Church (TEC) • TEC Parishes • * General Interest • Natural Disasters: Earthquakes, Tornadoes, Hurricanes, etc. • * Religion News & Commentary • Inter-Faith Relations • Other Faiths • Judaism • * South Carolina

Frederic and Anne-Laure Pascal are devout Roman Catholics who built their lives around their religion. When she lost her job last year, the young couple decided on an unlikely expression of their religious commitment: a worldwide "interfaith pilgrimage" to places where peace has won out over dueling dogmas.

Since October, the French couple has visited 11 nations from Iraq to Malaysia in an odyssey to find people of all creeds who have dedicated their lives to overcoming religious intolerance in some of the world's most divided and war-torn corners.

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KIM LAWTON, correspondent: At the 92nd Street Y in New York, Vanderbilt Divinity School professor Amy-Jill Levine is making the case that Jews and Christians alike need to pay more attention to the Jewishness of Jesus, and the best way to do that, she believes, is by reading the New Testament from a Jewish perspective.

PROFESSOR LEVINE: If I want to understand Jewish history, the New Testament is one of the best sources that I’ve got.

LAWTON: Levine, who is an observant Jew, is co-editor of The Jewish Annotated New Testament, a version of the Christian scripture with footnotes and commentaries written entirely by Jewish scholars.

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Everyone willing to follow the Lord is supposed to have listened in some way to this seemingly imperious command: “Come!” a command which implies an act of faith, referred to sometimes as the “leap of faith.” As it is clear from the Scriptures, what we are able to see is not faith, as the biblical faith is defined as : “Now faith is the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen.” We have to decide “in spite of”’, in order to experience the power of God. But we need to remember that everything must be done according the Word of God. Peter did not experience the possibility to walk on water because he decided to leave the boat but because of the Word, the Command of the Lord.

The Word of God tell us to “expect to suffer hardship” and dishonor for the sake of His Name. Our Christian confession is not acceptable if we ignore this statement, if we do not manifest the patience of the Lord in our sufferings. Anybody ignoring it will be ashamed in that day.

Let us remember that sometimes the leap of faith leads us towards some impasses. Just as the Word led the sons of Israel leaving Egypt toward the impasse of the Red sea. These impasses are midway between promises of God and their fulfillments and they challenge our faith. Believers are to accept these challenges as a part of their spiritual course. The Son was challenged at Calvary in the hardest way, as it is written in the Scriptures....

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Pope Benedict has condemned violence committed in God’s name and personally exonerated Jews of responsibility for Jesus’ death in his latest book, released on Thursday. The book, the second in a planned three-part series on the life of Jesus, is a detailed, highly theological and academic recounting of the last week in Jesus’ life.

Publishers have printed 1.2 million copies of the book in seven languages. A blaze of international publicity included teleconferences with the media in several countries.

In one section, Benedict writes that there can be no justification for violence carried out in God’s name, an assertion as applicable to Islamist militancy today as to violence that the Catholic Church itself committed in the past as it spread the faith.

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A technological crackdown, telegraphed by Mormon leaders, has effectively blocked the pre-eminent whistle-blower of controversial proxy baptisms from accessing the LDS Church’s database that chronicles so-called baptisms for the dead.

LDS officials defend the move, saying it helps prevent overzealous Mormons and mischief-makers from violating church policy by submitting the names of prominent Jewish figures, such as Anne Frank and Daniel Pearl, both discovered on the baptism rolls in recent weeks.

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...[Middle Eastern Christians] share of the region's population has plunged from 20% a century ago to less than 5% today and falling. In Egypt, 200,000 Coptic Christians fled their homes last year after beatings and massacres by Muslim extremist mobs. Since 2003, 70 Iraqi churches have been burned and nearly a thousand Christians killed in Baghdad alone, causing more than half of this million-member community to flee. Conversion to Christianity is a capital offense in Iran, where last month Pastor Yousef Nadarkhani was sentenced to death. Saudi Arabia outlaws private Christian prayer.

As 800,000 Jews were once expelled from Arab countries, so are Christians being forced from lands they've inhabited for centuries.

The only place in the Middle East where Christians aren't endangered but flourishing is Israel. Since Israel's founding in 1948, its Christian communities (including Russian and Greek Orthodox, Catholics, Armenians and Protestants) have expanded more than 1,000%.

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For the settlers, the presence of the Christian workers has more practical applications.

"Today we have more than 200 acres. It's a lot of agriculture and it takes a lot of work," says Veret Ben Sadon, who helps run the Tura Winery. "We saw that we cannot work alone. I can say for sure that without this help, we cannot do what we are doing today."

Essentially she gets free labor for the heavy seasonal work that needs to be done. She says there is a labor shortage in the area and the Christians fill the gap.

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American Christians would be understandably outraged if they learned of Muslims burning the Bible. Muslims have an even greater reverence for their holy book. Omid Safi, who teaches Islamic studies at the University of North Carolina, notes that Muslims look at the Qur'an the way Christians look at Jesus. "In an Islamic universe . . . the word becomes not a person, but a book," he says. "For a Muslim to see the Qur'an burnt . . . it would look and feel like someone burning Jesus, or a crucifix."

Christians should at least understand and respect the way Muslims look at the Qur'an. Most Muslims have a higher regard for the Bible than most Christians have for the Qur'an. It is unlikely that a Muslim would ever burn a Bible.

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...for the Apostle Paul, diversity, not uniformity, in every aspect of human life and language and culture, characterizes the unity and catholicity of the church (1 Corinthians 12:12-31). His own speech, he admits, is “not with plausible words of wisdom, but with a demonstration of the Spirit and of power” (1 Corinthians 2:4).

“Interestingly,” Tim [Griffin] writes, "for purposes of both ecumenical and interfaith discussions, this approach of humble shared ignorance provides a basis of shared experience. We can begin to see that the categories from which we, as Christians and as Episcopalians, have expressed our understanding of the Holy are limited and provisional. When we acknowledge that, we may be more willing to “listen and listen” and hear, to paraphrase Isaiah. And we will no doubt be more willing to show radical hospitality when we acknowledge that our practices are simply ways of clothing the mystery."

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Although the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints promised in 1995 to stop including Holocaust victims in its ritual, the church admitted last week that Anne Frank had been “baptized” in a Mormon church in the Dominican Republic. On Wednesday, The Boston Globe reported that Daniel Pearl, a reporter for The Wall Street Journal who was kidnapped and killed by terrorists in Pakistan in early 2002, was baptized last June in Twin Falls, Idaho; Mr. Pearl was Jewish.

Also on Wednesday, the church released a letter reiterating its policy that “without exception, church members must not submit for proxy temple ordinances any names from unauthorized groups, such as celebrities and Jewish Holocaust victims.”

In proxy baptism, a living Mormon immerses himself or herself in a baptismal font on behalf of a dead person. A church spokesman, Michael Otterson, said Friday that the ritual was done in the spirit of love, and that people’s souls were free not to become Mormons.

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Methodist and Latter-day Saint historians, theologians, preachers and congregants gathered Friday in Washington, D.C., like long-lost family members becoming reacquainted.

The common roots and differences between Methodists and The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints were explored at an interfaith conference titled "At the Crossroads, Again," hosted by the Foundation for Religious Diplomacy and the Wesley Theological Center.

The Foundation for Religious Diplomacy exists to build trust and friendship between religious traditions which are often suspicious of each other, foundation president Randall Paul said.

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Politicians and academics have paid tribute to a world-renowned Birmingham philosopher who “would not flinch from controversy” and who was once accused of heresy.

Professor John Hick, seen by many as the most influential philosopher of religion of recent times, has died just weeks after celebrating his 90th birthday.

The former University of Birmingham academic and church minister is remembered for helping to stop South African apartheid-era cricketers playing in Birmingham.

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The Los Angeles-based Simon Wiesenthal Center denounced the news.

"We are outraged that such insensitive actions continue in the Mormon temples," said Rabbi Abraham Cooper, a spokesman at the centre.

The Mormon religion allows baptism after death, and believes the departed soul can then accept or reject the baptismal rites.

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In a time when disdain for other faiths is commonplace, even blessed in some religious circles, how does a Bible study instructor contrast the teachings and doctrines of another tradition and his own without seeming intolerant? And conversely, can the increased sensitivity to multiculturalism and religious diversity in early 21st-century America gradually diminish the celebration of one faith tradition's distinctive place in the theological spectrum?

"If you're going to take your religion seriously, you should feel it's superior to others. Why else believe in it?" said Alan Wolfe, director of the Boisi Center for Religion and American Public Life at Boston College. "On the other hand, society does require a hands-off attitude toward other faiths in order for us to all live together. It's a dilemma."

Thomas, who was on staff at Concordia Seminary in Clayton for 18 years, said he believes the Bible studies at St. Paul's have stayed on the respectful side of the line. His goal with the classes, he said, is to explain the teachings of another religion and to ask why Lutherans don't believe the same thing.

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Perhaps the gravest under-publicized atrocity in the world is the persecution of Christians. A comprehensive Pew Forum study last year found that Christians are persecuted in 131 countries containing 70 percent of the world’s population, out of 197 countries in the world (if Palestine, Taiwan, South Sudan, and the Vatican are included). Best estimates are that about 200 million Christians are in communities where they are persecuted. There is not the slightest question of the scale and barbarity of this persecution, and a little of it is adequately publicized. But this highlights the second half of the atrocity: the passivity and blasé indifference of most of the West’s media and governments.

It is not generally appreciated that over 100,000 Christians a year are murdered because of their faith. Because Christianity is, by a wide margin, the world’s largest religion, the leading religion in the traditionally most advanced areas of the world, and, despite its many fissures, the best organized, largely because of the relatively tight and authoritarian structure of the Roman Catholic Church, the West is not accustomed to thinking of Christians as a minority, much less a persecuted one.

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Archbishop of Canterbury Dr. Rowan Williams met with Chief Rabbis Yona Metzger and Shlomo Amar on Thursday during a week-long personal pilgrimage to Israel and the West Bank.

The office of the Diocese of Jerusalem of the Anglican Church said that during Williams’ visit he emphasized “the importance of constructive dialogue and co-existence between all religions,” and the need to “consolidate the peace process between the people of this region.”

Invited by the head of the Anglican Diocese of Jerusalem Bishop Suheil Dawani, Williams was on a private tour and so did not make any public statements.

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Traveling to Israel with Jewish colleagues earlier this month had a transforming effect on the Rev. Susan Sica, vicar of Saint Gregory’s Episcopal Church in Parsippany.

“It would have been easy to go to Israel and have a sanitized experience that only touched on Christian sites — where Jesus walked, and that sort of thing. But then we would never have really looked at what Israel is today,” she told NJJN in a phone conversation a few days after returning.

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The United States is currently in what some have called the "Mormon Moment" – a time when the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints is gaining attention due, in part, to the popularity of Mormon celebrities and politicians. Many Mormons, however, are leaving the church to embrace traditional Christianity, but such radical shifts in thought don't come easily.

The Western Institute for Intercultural Studies (WIIS), a think-tank organization dedicated to helping Christians understand and witness to those of other religions, has come up with a program which includes DVDs and a workbook that are designed to help ex-Mormons have an easier transition into Christianity.

Nearly 70,000 people left the Mormon Church in the U.S. in 2007, according to the Mormon Social Science Association via the first Transitions DVD. Some of the thousands of Mormons who have left the church have turned to Christianity, which is why WIIS created "Transitions: The Mormon Migration from Religion to Relationship," a six-part program that helps "immigrants" to Christianity address both personal and doctrinal issues.

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